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Stephan Pastis, Creator of Pearls Before Swine

© Susanna McLeod

The desire for fame, fortune and immortality runs deep through our culture. So deep, in fact, that the desire reaches right down to Rat level. But a Pig could be just as happy without any great distinction. The opposing goals of the main characters of Pearls Before Swine make for riotous comic humour in this rising-star strip.

Stephan Pastis knew he wanted to be a cartoonist, even as a youngster. He successfully drew cartoons for his school newspapers, though he had no formal art training. Thinking that he couldn't make his livelihood in cartoons, Pastis enrolled in Political Science at the University of California at Berkeley when he was 18. He graduated in 1989 and continued on to the UCLA Law School to become a lawyer.

Still with comics tumbling around in his blood, Pastis drew a popular comic about the escapades of a law student entitled "Rosen" for the university paper. He developed the "Rat" character while at law school in 1991. Literally. "...I was hopelessly bored in a class of the European Economic Community," he noted on comics.com. *(1) The over-confident, outspoken Rat has been the mainstay of his cartoon work ever since. Pastis graduated in 1993, and found a position as an attorney with Thornton, Taylor, Downs and Becker in San Francisco.

By 1996, during the early years of his career as a legal eagle, Pastis had generated several comic strips and sent his work out to the syndicates. Rejection slips were the usual response. He continued to develop comics and came up with the first attempt at Pearls Before Swine, with the disparaging Rat and naïve Pig as the feature characters, in 1997. He built a large portfolio of work throughout 1998, but rather than submitting it for syndicate examination, he set it aside. The sting of past rejection was too strong.

Eighteen months later, Pastis polled his fellow attorneys to choose which strips were best, then he gathered up the nerve to submit his top 40 Pearls Before Swine selections. Three syndicates showed interest in his distinctive work. Pastis signed with United Media to launch his comic as a Web strip. It debuted on comics.com in November, 2000. Pearls Before Swine proved a success and made its newspaper debut in January, 2002. It has been gaining faithful, giggling fans ever since.

Removing all details but the most fundamental, Pastis drew his characters in a simple manner, and following the same assumption, he kept their names equally uncomplicated. "Giving them names," the cartoonist said in People Talking with Jory John, "kind of made it artificial. He's just Rat." The backgrounds were kept uncluttered and appealing. The writing of the comic strip is Pastis' favoured part of cartooning Pearls Before Swine. "There's something electric going on when one of those ideas comes out of you." *(2)

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